Page 86 of The Alpha's Cursed Queen

“My lover!” I growl. “Are you happy now?”

He stares at me for a long time, and I start to feel nervous. Finally, he says, “Show me a picture of your husband.”

“What?”

He takes another step toward me. “He was the so-called love of your life, wasn’t he?” His smile is cool. “Show me a photo of him. You must have one on your phone.”

“That’s a gross invasion of my privacy. You have no right to—”

“Do I look like I care?” Darian demands. “I want to see what this man looks like, the one who was so much better than me in every possible way.”

“I don’t have to show you anything!” I move backward, and the backs of my knees hit the bench I was sitting on.

“Could it be that you have no pictures of this esteemed Paul in your phone?”

“Whether I do or not, what’s it to you?” I try to go on the offensive, but his next statement stops me in my tracks.

“Well, I have pictures of the woman I love in my phone.” He takes out his phone and shows me a photo of a woman sleeping in bed, a sheet wrapped around her. He swipes to the next one, where the same woman is sitting on a log, eating a pastry. The third picture is of her and Darian together. She’s sleeping, and Darian is grinning into the camera.

It’s me.

I’m the girl in all his photos.

My mouth moves, but nothing comes out.

“I have loved you from the moment I met you,” Darian says in a low voice. “When you disappeared, when I finally began to accept that you might truly be gone, I still kept my pictures of you. You see, when you love somebody beyond all reason, andyou’ve lost them, when everything goes dark, it’s those pictures that remind you of her existence, of how she smiled at you, how she looked at you. You need some part of her in order to keep going. So, where is the picture of Paul on your phone?”

Why does he have photos of me? Why did he keep them preserved on his phone? He got rid of me, didn’t he? He got what he wanted. What kind of sick game is this?

And what if it is not a game?

My heart is in my mouth as I look at him, and Darian misunderstands. His eyes flash at me as he asks, “Where did you meet Paul, Alice? How did he win your heart? Because from all accounts, what I did to you was so bad that you wouldn’t have been able to trust anybody. I’m not blind! Even if I wanted to kill myself in that moment, I still saw what you went through! By your own admission, I was a monster! So, how did you go and fall in love with someone so quickly after a monster ruined your life?”

My body is trembling now. He has begun to figure it out.

“Do you know what I saw the other day when I looked up your husband’s name and the name of the company he supposedly died at?” His voice goes softer now. “There was only one Paul Scott there. And he was a sixty-year-old man who was a widower. He also happened to live in your apartment complex when you first moved to Arizona.”

I have nowhere to go. Darian has me trapped against the bench.

“Why did you run to Arizona and marry a sixty-year-old widower, Alice?” he asks, his eyes sharp. “Or was he simply your most convenient excuse? Because I don’t believe there ever wasa Paul in your life. And if that’s the case, who is the father of your daughter?”

My claws dig into my palm as my pulse races. He figured it out. Mary and I never thought anybody would dig so deep. After all, who does that?!

As far as anybody knew, Paul existed. And in the human world, even if someone were to realize that he was thirty-seven years older than me when we married, they would not think twice about it. After all, age gaps are nothing new or strange. My neighbor was a sweet man. When he passed away, it was Mary who came up with the idea, and I thought it was fine. Paul had no family to speak of. Nobody would notice.

But Darian noticed. He noticed the holes in the story, and he poked them till everything fell apart.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I try to push past him, but his hands come to settle on my upper arms as he looks at me, his gaze tense. “Your daughter, Alice. Who is her father?”

He’s so close to figuring it all out. If he does, if he finds out that Mira is his, what will I do? I have to stop him from uncovering the truth!

“It was a one-night stand, okay?” I snarl. “I went into a bar, and the first stranger I saw, I let him fuck me. When I got to Arizona, I slept around. After what you’d done, I needed something to fix me. So, I slept with every human I could find. I got pregnant, and I decided to keep the child.”

His grip on me weakens, and I shove him away from me. “You win, Darian. There is no Paul. He was just a convenient excuse so that Mira never questioned the absence of her father. Butdon’t think for even a minute that this changes anything. Those pictures on your phone? I don’t know why you’ve kept them all this time, maybe some convoluted plot in case you ever found me…”

I shake my head, not believing this is happening. “I don’t know how your mind works, Darian. I’ve stopped trying to figure it out. But now you know the truth. I was a whore. I slept with so many men that I lost count. You brought me to the point where I could only feel something in another man’s arms. Good job. You got what you wanted. There’s no point trying to destroy my life all over again now. It’s already a wreck. And you don’t want somebody like me who is all used up. So, delete those photos and get on with your life. And for the love of God, leave me alone!”

I push past him. I need to get away from this man, but he’s not having it. He pulls me back, forcing me against the brick wall, out of sight of the people passing by the windows. “I don’t care how many men you slept with. I don’t. As long as there’s nobody in your heart, Alice.”

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